Each year, our clients tell us that it gets more challenging to succeed.
Leaders tell us this means bigger goals, increased complexity, and tighter budgets. Employees tell us this means higher expectations, an increased pace of change, and the need to do more with less.
Yet, some leaders and teams significantly outperform their peers. We wanted to know why. So we launched a research initiative to understand what distinguishes the winners from the losers.
Our presupposition? That Organizational Alignment (the optimum combination of business strategy, corporate culture, and talent) makes the difference.
We worked with 26 independent variables measured against 15 dependent variables of organizational performance. We surveyed 410 companies from across 8 industry segments that represent the fast growing middle market with 77% of respondents in management or leadership positions.
What We FoundThe data supports our organizational alignment theory to an astounding degree. Here are the key results so you can judge for yourself:
Highly aligned companies grow 58% faster and are 72% more profitable while outperforming unaligned companies...
- Customer Retention 2.23-to-1
- Customer Satisfaction 3.2-to-1
- Leadership Effectiveness 8.71-to-1
- Employee Engagement 16.8-to-1
7 Factors Matter Most
While all 26 ingredients in the organizational alignment recipe significantly impacted performance and any alignment factor taken alone will not work in isolation, seven factors matter most.
The take-away?
When your Strategy is clear enough to act, your Culture is high performing, and your Talent is differentiated, your company is set up to perform at its peak.
The critical question...Is your company aligned enough to be one of the winners?
Download Organizational Alignment Research Findings and the 7 Factors that Matter Most
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned
It is all about performance.
Leaders are being asked to do more with less, faster - and they cannot afford to miss the mark.
If you are not getting the most out of what you have, think organizational alignment. If you believe that you are headed in the right direction, but current performance is not where you want it to be, think organizational alignment.
Getting aligned means configuring the critical elements of your company to optimize short- and long-term performance. Based upon our proprietary alignment research, we know that misaligned strategy, culture and talent cause poor short-term performance and unsustainable long-term organizational health in terms of revenue, profits, customer satisfaction and retention, employee engagement, leadership effectiveness and business performance.
So, as a leader, how do you get aligned? It all starts (but does not end) with strategic clarity.
First, good leaders start by creating a strategy that outlines clear and compelling choices about where to play and what actions to take. Done right, a successful strategic plan sets a company up to perform beyond just the sum of its parts.
When it comes to performance however, strategy is only the beginning, not the end. For a strategy to make a true difference, it must be properly executed. To be properly executed it must be understood, believable and implementable enough by all key stakeholders. That is not an easy or simple task.
- IBM found that less than 10% of well formulated strategies are effectively executed.
- 49% of executives recently surveyed by Booz & Company said their companies had no strategic priorities.
- Employees we surveyed perceived that the organizational strategy was 50% less clear to them than it was to leadership.
What we hear over and over again from leaders is that their finely crafted strategic plan is not being implemented at the quality or speed that they expect. When leaders dig deeper, they find that the strategy is not clear enough, not agreed to, not perceived to be equal to the challenge, or not supported by adequate resources to truly succeed. What moves should a leader make to bring their strategy to life?
Initially, we recommend that you, your leadership team, and their direct reports look for these five strategic clarity warning signs.
- People consistently ask for more clarifying information before they act
- Key constituents do not agree on major priorities, resources, funding, or timing
- People do not believe it is equal to the challenge of your business objectives
- The plan is not being executed consistently throughout the organization
- People do not seem to have the right mindset to effectively execute the plan
If you are experiencing any of these five warning signs, it is time for you and your leadership team to take the steps necessary to get all key stakeholders on board and pointed in the same direction before pushing ahead.
Read Organizational Alignment Whitepaper to Learn What Comes After Strategic Clarity
Research Strategic Clarity Solutions
Measure Your Current Level of Strategic Clarity
About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned
Customer centricity is a culture of putting the customer at the center of everything you do.
And it matters. According to the Harvard Business School, increasing customer retention rates by just 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%.
Just about every company depends upon satisfied and loyal customers for their success. Most claim in their mission statement and company values to be customer-centric. Yet few companies truly put the customer first and foremost on a day-to-day basis. Comcast, the lowest ranking customer service company in 2014 according to Temkin Ratings, proudly states that they "strive to earn the respect and trust of our customers" in their corporate values. Yet customers rated them at 22% compared to the leader, USAA, at 81%.
See if you can find what is wrong with the illustration above. Sure, there are attendants waiting for the bell to ring. But why should a customer need such an attention-getting device? Customer-centric companies excel at proactively anticipating client needs with the ability and genuine desire to help. Customer centricity is not an empty slogan - it is a way of doing business.
One of the attributes of truly customer-centric companies is having the infrastructure where listening is part of the culture of the whole company, not just in the customer service or marketing departments.
To see that your company truly operates with the customer at the center of your business, you need to build a culture that treats the customer as king. The entire organization from top to bottom needs to understand that this is simply "the way" you do business.
Read About the 6 Tips To Build a Customer-Centric Culture
About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned
What can one truly delighted customer do for your company?
When you can transform a simply satisfied customer to a genuine promoter, you have a customer who will buy more, return again and spread the good word to their friends. If you could replicate this interaction across the organization, every customer could become an important advocate for your company!
According to Bain & Company, companies that excel in the customer experience grow revenues up to 8% faster based upon stronger loyalty and higher recommendations. As a result, delighted customers have a lifetime value of 6 to 14 times greater than dissatisfied customers:
- Articulate a customer-centric vision Company leaders need to create a clear, compelling and implementable vision of how your company truly differentiates itself from the competition in the eyes of your customers.
Is your aim to offer speedy delivery, to anticipate the needs of your customers every time, or, perhaps, to solve customer issues in one easy call?
To delight their customers, Zappos depends upon free overnight delivery service as a "thank you" for each order. L.L. Bean offers an actual live, friendly, knowledgeable person on the line on every call...no phone tree needed.
Your customer service strategy needs to be simply stated and understood by everyone from the board room to the employees on the front line.
Read the Other Three Steps to Truly Delight Your Customers
About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned
Most high growth companies today complete much of their core work through projects and project teams.
Yet, recent studies by McKinsey, IBM and KPMG found that:
- 17% of projects went so poorly that they can threatened the company's survival
- 45% run over budget
- 7% miss final project milestones
- 56% deliver less value than originally predicted
- 70% of organizations have suffered at least one failed project in the last year
- The best organizations at projects are 10 times more successful than the worst
- The biggest perceived barriers to project success were changing mindsets and attitudes, corporate culture, lack of executive support, and the underestimation of project complexity
Successful high growth organizations know how to define, plan and execute successful projects. They learn from early slip-ups and know how to avoid similar mistakes going forward.
Savvy project sponsors know when to pull the plug or change course in a way that delivers what is most important to the business. Smart project leaders know when and how to halt the forward momentum of a project encountering problems until they have what they need to confidently deliver what has been promised to their key stakeholders. Experienced project team members know when a project is going sideways and how to articulate their concerns in a way that matters to those who can do something about it.
Regardless of your project role, here is a list of the top 10 ways you might slip below your project goals and how to ensure a safer, more secure path to desired project results.
Read More About the Top 10 Project Management Mistakes to Avoid
Benchmark Your Project Performance
About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned
As a project leader, it is not uncommon to be handed a project where the resources available are not adequate enough to achieve the desired results. In fact, project leaders of failed projects almost always agree with this statement from a recent high tech program manager:
"In hindsight, we did not have enough of the right technical expertise or knowledge to do what the project evolved to be or an effective process to judge if we could do or not do something. We asked for them, but did not get them in time. We were told to just work harder."
With every project comes competition for top resources to get the job done. When company leadership tells you there's not enough staff or budget to give you what you believe is required to get the job done, how do you get what you need?
The short answer is by being a strong advocate for your project and your project team.
To successfully lead a project team, an advocate must do much more than just plead the project's cause with a strong voice and subtle (or not) arm-twisting. They must gain respect among influential peers and executive leadership by demonstrating a thorough understanding of the project's business value and purpose compared to other strategic priorities.
They must also be able to clearly articulate the importance of getting the "right resources" to achieve the desired outcome. Successful project advocates employ a disciplined methodology to gain clear, concise, complete answers with their key internal and external stakeholders to the following questions:
- Desired Outcomes for the Project - What do key stakeholders (customers, users, managers, partners, team members) want? How do the desired outcomes fit into the company's strategic priorities?
- Project End Result and Success Criteria - What is success? How will we know? Why is it worth doing?
- Critical Success Factors - What are the critical few things that must happen (or not happen) for the project to have the greatest likelihood of success?
- Project Scope - What are the project's key requirements? Critical resources? What are the trade-offs regarding cost, quality, scope and time?
- Project Schedule - Who does what, when and with whom?
- Key Stakeholders - Who are the critical internal and external individuals essential to the project's success? What's needed from them? What do they need? How often?
- Project Risks - What can go wrong? What must we do to confine and control project risk? What are the critical business implications?
Strong advocates use their in-depth understanding of the business, the performance environment, and the project itself to influence others to support the project's needs in the manner required for success.
Are you effectively advocating for what you need?
As project leader, be prepared to support the project in whatever way is required... from taking a direct role, to providing staff, budget, equipment, facilities, advice, air cover and time. The ability to effectively influence others to do something they did not know they wanted to do, or don't want to do, is how you can gain a competitive advantage in the never-ending battle for resources.
Benchmark Your Project Performance
Research Project Post Mortem Solutions
About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned
Only 21% met quota.
According to research by Xactly, a leading provider of cloud-based incentive solutions:
- As many as 79 percent of quota-carrying Software as a Service (SaaS) sales representatives missed their goals.
- 14% of sales reps in the study do not even achieve 10% of quota.
- Across the entire data set, the average quota attainment, regardless of tenure, was only 58%.
Pretty scary that only 21% met quota. What does this mean for you and your sales team?
First of all, if you want to create a high performance sales team, stop making excuses for you and your team. The most common excuse we hear from the VP of Sales is that the quotas are unfair. These sales leaders claim the quotas are driven by the CEO or CFO to meet unrealistic external expectations that are not based in the reality of the competitive landscape, the current value proposition or the available sales resources. While this may be the case, it is the sales leader's job to create the circumstances for their teams to thrive. 79% of reps missing quota does not calibrate to a high performance sales environment. That means sales leaders need to create the right sales strategy, culture and team to succeed.
The second most common excuse is that the sales team is littered with too many underperformers. If your team is anything like those in the survey, almost 80% of your reps may be underperforming. It is your job as the sales leader to hire people who will perform. It is also your job as the sales leader to identify the root cause of any performance problems and to help underperformers succeed or move on as quickly as possible - ideally within 90 days.
We believe that there are four attributes that sales leaders must incorporate into their hiring profiles and performance management processes to create a high performance sales team.
Read More About the 4 Key Attributes
Benchmark Your Sales Performance
About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned
According to the McKinsey Quarterly, a top quartile performing salesperson is 14 times more productive than an average performer. We certainly see the same at our clients.
We believe that it is a sales leader's responsibility to create the sales environment necessary to stimulate higher performance from their sales force. On most sales teams, leaders need to get more from their people in order to be successful. For example, a current high tech client has 31 percent of reps above quota, 36 percent at 50-70% of quota and 33 percent at less than 50% of quota. To meet targets, the VP of sales needs to increase percent to quota by 20% in twelve months. Regardless of the industry or size of the sales force, it comes down to leaders' ability to stimulate the performance of others.
Of course hiring and retaining the right sales people (see above article) is absolutely critical. But once the right sales people are aboard, how does a sales leader create a sales environment that significantly improves speed to quota, revenue, margin, win-rate, deal size, etc.?
That is the sales leader's challenge and, when it is not done well, it will matter little if you have the right sales team or not. An ineffective sales leader can render an entire sales organization ineffective. Just as a great coach improves the performance of an athlete, effective sales leaders improve the performance of their sales teams.
Most of our clients cite creating a high performance culture as one of their top three talent management priorities, but almost two-thirds of their line managers do not feel that the talent and performance management processes they have today are driving greater performance. Because the success of a sales leader depends on the success of others, we asked ourselves three questions:
- Execution: How do sales leaders drive improved go-to-market strategic execution and individual contribution across an entire sales organization?
- Performance: How can sales leaders consistently make the right moves to stimulate performance improvement from their people?
- Scale: How can sales leaders ensure that performance improvement scales throughout an entire sales team instead of just in small pockets of success?
The answer to all three questions forms the foundation of creating and maintaining a High Performance Sales Culture
Read More About Creating a High Performance Sales Culture
Research High Performance Culture Solutions
About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned
In school, we get "A's" and "F's." At work we get ambiguity and the consequences are huge.
In school, students know just where they stand on the 5-point grading scale from A to F. They can check their GPA online in real time to know how they are performing. Test scores and homework assignments are routinely posted online each day. Teachers make clear at the beginning of the semester what percent of the final grade is based upon homework, class participation, test scores and extra-credit. Students and parents are also informed about what types of grades, test scores and extra-curricular activities are required to get into specific tiers of colleges. While teachers, reward systems, class sizes and curriculum designs have come under a lot of scrutiny, our education system does not seem to lack clarity in terms of student performance standards.
Performance standards are also clearly delineated in sports. The definition of winning and losing is understood by coaches, players and spectators. The competition is clear. The field of play is agreed to and understood by all. The rules of play are public knowledge. While there are many different approaches to try to beat the competition, the consequences associated with success and failure are clear from the beginning.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the corporate world. At work, the definition of success and failure is often vague and the rules of play (the corporate culture) are often misunderstood, inconsistent and under-leveraged.
Over the last decade, we have asked hundreds of leaders and managers how their success is measured, what constitutes failure and to describe the rules of play. In terms of creating a high performance environment, their answers are alarming.
- 71% reported that they did not have a clear definition of success.
- 92% stated that they had no definition of what constitutes failure.
- 84% described their corporate culture as inconsistent and unaligned with their current business and talent strategies.
Imagine sending your kids to high school not knowing what was expected of them, how their performance would be measured or what was required for entry into their college of choice. Imagine athletes playing in a basketball game where the rules changed during the game. Imagine swimmers competing in a race without knowing where they stand compared to other swimmers or the time clock. How would you help your kids get the most out of their education? How would you effectively coach the basketball team? How would you properly prepare for the next swim competition?
As absurd as it sounds, that is how many employees feel in their jobs.
They do not know where they stand or what is required of them. They do not know if they are over-performing or under-performing. They are unsure what will happen if they over-achieve or under-achieve. This lack of performance clarity creates a significant leadership problem for companies looking to grow.
Read More about How to Clearly Define Success and Failure
Research High Performance Team Solutions
Benchmark Your Strategic Clarity
About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned
Could this be you?
A high growth client had enjoyed a competitive advantage and been the leader in their market for decades until key regulations and competition dramatically shifted. The changes created vulnerability with the first signs of distress marked by the loss of a cornerstone account and an increased difficulty in acquiring and retaining top talent.
Confident that they could do better and frustrated with the decline in business, the leadership team was looking for answers.
They spent months understanding the changing market conditions and reshaping the current strategy. They carefully shared the new corporate strategy across the company, but for some reason they were not hitting the mark. When asked, the executive team ranked their strategic clarity at 90% in terms of providing clear reasoning why the company was doing what it was doing and how their suggested group of specific actions should lead to better performance.
Surprising to the leadership team, their employees felt differently. Our 3x Alignment Survey found that their employees rated their strategy at only 60% in terms of clarity, believability and implementation - not enough to rally them to execute the new plans. For corporate initiatives to take root outside of the boardroom, employees must be consistently won over by their validity, significance and urgency.
Unclear business strategies blur priorities and trade-offs for employees and increase negative organizational churn. Good strategies guide the organization, facilitate resource allocation, and sharpen decision-making at every level.
It is the leadership team's responsibility to clearly and consistently communicate and cascade the strategic priorities to each and every employee. You will know you are on the right path when your strategy:
- Can be shared and understood on one page.
- Guides important day-to-day decisions.
- Provides a solid foundation during challenging times.
- Is constructively discussed, monitored, and refined.
- Becomes executed consistently throughout the company.
- Provides a source of motivation and focus.
Read The 5 Expert Tips to Better Communicate Your Strategic Plan
Research Strategic Clarity Solutions
Research Communication Solutions
About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned
Managers matter. According to a McKinsey and the London School of Economics study of over 700 companies, a one point increase in management competency equated to an average:
- 6% higher sales per employee
- 70% increase in market share growth
- 20% improvement in market cap
- 40% higher sales growth percentage
Similarly, a follow-up study led by Stanford University of more than 4,000 companies across the globe confirmed that organizations with effectively applied management practices outperform their peers. In fact, a single point improvement in management practice score was associated with the same increase in output as a 25% increase in the work force or a 65% increase in invested capital. This secondary study also highlighted three findings that wise leaders have known for decades:
- Performance Expectations and Accountability Matter - "The less likely an organization is to make use of professional managers and to appoint its managers on merit, the poorer its performance."
- Management Potential is Often Underutilized - "The managers interviewed had little idea of the overall management performance of their own organizations."
- Effective Management is Multi-Dimensional - "No single dimension provides the key to improved management performance: there is no magic lever for management excellence."
Yet with all of the empirical data and intuitive knowledge that management matters, too many high-growth companies mistakenly exclude their managers from the very strategic planning and implementation processes required for them to excel as managers.
We believe it is a big mistake to keep your managers in the dark about company strategy. When we ask leaders, the majority (68%) think that the corporate strategy is clear enough. When we ask employees however, ambiguity reigns - the strategy is 50% less clear.
If your managers are not clear about the strategic direction of the company, their ability to lead, set priorities and make trade-offs for themselves and their team is severely hampered.
Read 5 Warning Signs that Your Managers Are Falling Behind Strategically
Research Related Management Solutions
Benchmark Your Strategic Clarity
About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned
All right...perhaps it is not "happiness" per se that we are looking for. Instead what we want is more positive employee engagement, discretionary effort and productivity.
Why?
Because we know from our clients and from research from organizations like Gallup that "companies with engaged workforces have higher earnings per share" in addition to outperforming companies with less engaged employees. Reason enough. But another, perhaps even more compelling reason, is that happiness factor. Employees look forward to coming to work, doing their part, helping their team and fulfilling the vision of the organization.
Here are two ways you can approach that ideal:
- Share what you know.
It is always easier to feel as if you are a valued member of the team if you are fully informed about how the business works and what is going on. Often, it is not that employees don't care; they simply don't have the business acumen to understand how what they do as individuals directly and meaningfully contributes to the work of the whole enterprise.
Give them some background and context so they can begin to understand and eventually participate in the decisions that affect their future and the health of the organization. Be ready to answer their questions about how your company's finances work, who the key stakeholders are, how you plan to build market share, what differentiates your from others in your space, where you anticipate competition, etc. You can even discuss critical business metrics...how you evaluate them and what targets you have in the coming year and why.
The better they see that what they do, whether in manufacturing or sales, affects the bottom line, the more clearly they sense their own value and commit to helping the business fulfill its potential and continue to grow.
- Draw a straight line from the individual to the company mission.
Each and every employee will work harder if they buy into the company's purpose. Instead of being stymied by obstacles that occur in their day-to-day routine, they will be more creative in their solutions because they understand why they are working. They do not check in each day simply for their weekly pay but in part for their team and ultimately for the company cause.
Help them understand just where they fit in the overall enterprise. What would happen if they did not do their job well? How would that affect the bottom line? How would that impact your key customers? Every cog in the machine needs oiling now and then. Do not neglect the need to feel valued. Your employees will perform as if they had real ownership...and in a truly engaged workforce, they do.
Learn more about engaging your workforce
Research Business Acumen Simulations for Leaders
About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned
With the speed of social media, it is far too easy to make big and visible branding mistakes these days.
Top 10 Branding Mistakes
The most common branding pitfalls that our clients report include:
- Lack of Differentiation: Failing to truly differentiate from the competition in the eyes of your target clients. Differentiation is a critical component of a go-to-market strategy. It allows you to combat pricing pressure and stand out from the pack. True differentiation means that there are no other perceived substitutes of similar value and that you can back up your unique claims.
For example, on the TV Show, Shark Tank, entrepreneurs are often tripped up by the celebrity investors when their products are not perceived to be appreciably different. From Custom Chef Hats for women that can be replaced with shower caps to selling socks in sets of 3 in case you lose one, smart investors (and customers) know "different" when they see it.
- Inconsistent Messaging: Using complicated, jargon-based, inconsistent, contradictory and confusing messaging can alienate consumers and customers.
For example, we recently took our car to a 10-minute oil change place. Once we gave them our car, it took 20 minutes to change our oil. Now that may be faster than our normal garage, but we left dissatisfied because they did not fulfill their brand promise.
- Over-Extending the Brand: Extending the brand too aggressively and not focusing on what you do best.
For example, in the 1990s, Harley Davidson motorcycles had acquired a cult-like status. The brand stood for toughness, masculinity, freedom and power. In a bid to leverage the brand, Harley introduced wine coolers, aftershave and perfumes. After robust criticism from loyal customers, Harley discontinued many inappropriate products. More products do not always mean more sales.
- Failing to Align: Misjudging the importance of aligning marketing, sales and service causes problems and inefficiencies through the entire customer lifecycle.
For example, Comcast Cable advertised the new Xfinity1 platform in our area. We received weekly fliers and sales calls about the promotion. When we finally picked up the phone. they spent 15 minutes asking questions and running through our account. Then they told us it was not yet available in our area. They wasted our time and their time.
Read More about the Top 10 Branding Mistakes and 4 Smart Ways to Grow and Live Your Brand Promise
About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned
Situation
Gas South serves more than 260,000 residential, business and government customers in Georgia and Florida and is best known for innovation and community commitment. Because Georgia is a deregulated gas market, customers can choose the best provider. Gas South's business is seasonal. The busy "Light Up" season runs from September 1 to the middle of November and is the prime time to convert calls into sales.
After outsourcing their service center for years, Gas South decided to bring the service center back in house to more closely align customer service with Gas South's service strategy.
When Gas South took the service center in house, the staff was asked to service and sell to better match the customer buying and issue resolution process. Happily, most reps exhibited behaviors that showed commitment to making sure the customers received whichever service they are eligible for, adhered to very basic standards like answering the phone correctly and exhibited basic courtesies like saying "thank you" or "please" when appropriate, and followed customer verification requirements on direct calls.
Complications
- While everyone was now expected to service and sell, not everyone had adequate service and sales skills to convert calls and give excellent customer service and the abilities varied significantly from rep to rep.
- Some reps were struggling to effectively move customers from the initial decision point to buying.
- Reps had to be trained to promote how the company provided a great service, motivate the customer to buy or address opportunities to sell long-term contracts.
- There was an opportunity to increase urgency created by the reps and, in some instances, reps did not have the skill set to take the call that was routed to them.
- Very little, if any, upfront discovery was done before quoting rates. When rates were quoted, they were given in a laundry list format without consideration for why one would choose a certain rate over another causing customer confusion and frustration.
- The Public Service Commission in Atlanta requires that a certain number of calls be answered in a certain amount of time.
- The call monitoring process was very detailed and sometimes missed the "essence" of the call while creating data overload and ambiguity for the reps and their managers.
Approach
- Conduct Sales Strategy Optimization Workout: Finalize the key success metrics to move and determine the critical few scenarios/call types with sales opportunities and craft an optimum and realistic approach to driving revenue.
- Design and Deliver Sales Pilot Session: Enable one core team to recognize and solve for top call types in order to impact sales conversion rate and average handling time.
- Train the Trainer: Enable one qualified Contact Center facilitator to deliver the sales workshops on an ongoing basis.
- Coach-the-Coach: Provide targeted performance methodology and feedback for customer service reps and their managers.
- Align Incentives: Update performance metrics and incentives to better align a sales and service culture
- Measure Results and Improve: Analyze the pilot deliverable results and critical few "Metrics to Move™" to determine next steps.
Metrics That Moved
- 35% increase in Sales Conversion Rate in 8 months
- 27% decrease in Average Handle Time in 8 months
- A specific, clear and coach-able customer acquisition process helped to uncover other underlying performance management issues to be addressed
Learn more about creating customer loyalty
About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned
Is it really true that on time, on budget and fulfilling all requirements means project success?
Whose requirements are we really trying to meet anyway?
And who decides if the original due date can be changed when the scope grows?
In this article we'll address the key people swirling around your project: stakeholders. You'll find some tips and other resources for optimizing stakeholder involvement in your project. "Who cares?" "What do they care about?" "What am I going to do about it?" Those are the three simple questions a project team can ask to understand their stakeholders and develop a strategy for keeping them happy.
As we developed an interactive workshop on stakeholder management built on those three questions, one of our project management experts put all the pieces together when he said, "That's just risk management for people." We think he's right.
Review this classic risk management process. Can you see the parallel?
- Identify risks.
- Analyze and quantify the risk.
- Develop a risk response.
So on your next (or current) project, consider treating your stakeholders as opportunities or threats and follow the three proven tips in this article to manage and exceed expectations of who matters most to your success.
Read More about Managing Stakeholder Risk
About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned
Take a 10-minute Alignment Research Survey & Get an Exclusive Copy of the Results
When it comes to strategy, IBM found that less than 10% of well formulated strategies are effectively executed. When it comes to culture, a recent Harvard study found that as much as half of the difference in operating profits between organizations in the same industry can be attributed to culture. When it comes to talent, you need look no farther than the Oakland A's and Moneyball to understand what differentiated talent strategies can mean to your business.
Take our 10-minute Alignment Research Survey to get key business insights and a chance to win a $100 Amazon.com gift card.
Companies perform better when their strategy, talent, and culture are aligned. Help your company by getting exclusive insights into how the alignment of strategy, culture, and talent impact performance when it matters most by understanding if:
- Your strategy is clear enough to act
- You are creating a high performing culture
- You have the right talent practices in place
You'll receive a complimentary copy of the Results and be entered into a drawing to win one $100 Amazon.com gift card. All responses are confidential.
Get started here: http://www.lsaglobal.com/alignment-survey
About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned
Successful (and unsuccessful) corporate cultures can take on many different shapes and sizes.
While we are heartened by the increased attention being given to the importance of organizational culture, we are concerned about some of the misinformation being propagated by practitioners promising quick fixes and silver bullets for everything that ails under-performing businesses.
We define culture as how things get done in an organization - especially when no one is looking. We believe that organizational cultures exist by design or by default. And, regardless of their origin, they can play a critical role in your company's success.
Test yourself against these three common myths.
Myth #1:
As long as you hire similar and smart people, your culture will be a competitive advantage.
Let's start with the well-intentioned idea of hiring similar people - people like you. Successful teams thrive on diversity in approach, style and background as long as they have a way of dealing effectively and productively with differences. In fact, according to research published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin by the School of Management at Brigham Young University and the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the richer the mix of players, the better the decision making and overall group effectiveness.
Secondly, hiring for skills and intelligence over cultural fit will not get you the talent that thrives in your unique culture. In fact, if you only look for "smarts" you may seriously sabotage your goal of creating a high performing corporate culture. Google learned this lesson during a period of high growth and now ensures that in addition to desired levels of proficiency, new hires have the right "Googliness." This includes the ability to collaborate, learn, handle ambiguity and be agile. In general, skills can be taught, but the key behavioral competencies that make sense for your unique corporate culture often cannot be learned.
Lastly, corporate culture is about more than who you hire. It is about the underlying values and assumptions that drive key business practices and behaviors. It is also about the level of alignment that those practices and behaviors have with your corporate strategy. High performing cultures are clearly understood, consistently modeled and observed, and intensely leveraged to drive peak performance.
Read More about the other 2 Culture Myths
About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned
When it comes to strategy, IBM found that less than 10% of well formulated strategies are effectively executed. When it comes to culture, a recent Harvard study found that as much as half of the difference in operating profits between organizations in the same industry can be attributed to culture. When it comes to talent, you need look no farther than the Oakland A's and Moneyball to understand what differentiated talent strategies can mean to your business.
Take our 10-minute Alignment Research Survey to get key business insights and a chance to win a $100 Amazon.com gift card.
Companies perform better when their strategy, talent, and culture are aligned. Help your company by getting exclusive insights into how the alignment of strategy, culture, and talent impact performance when it matters most by understanding if:
- Your strategy is clear enough to act
- You are creating a high performing culture
- You have the right talent practices in place
You'll receive a complimentary copy of the Results and be entered into a drawing to win one $100 Amazon.com gift card. All responses are confidential.
Get started here: http://www.lsaglobal.com/alignment-survey
About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned
Because it takes time and money to get new salespeople up-to-speed and because buyers want stability, most of our clients want their sales force to stay over the long term.
While the desired length of time is unique to each business model, less than twelve months seems universally unacceptable and three-to-ten years of tenure appears to be an attractive range for sales leaders.
It Starts with Hiring Right
If you did your homework as a sales manager and hired well, your new hire will have the right interpersonal, motivational and intellectual competencies to thrive on the job and in your corporate culture. But your job as team leader is not yet over.
Know Why Top Talent Leaves
It is as much your responsibility to keep "A" players on the team and successful as it is to select them in the first place. That means that you have to keep an eye on the top three reasons that most salespeople leave:
- Greater opportunities for advancement, learning, promotion and commissions
- Easier sales situations with more differentiated solutions or in less competitive sales environments
- Better cultural fit regarding how things actually get done in the organization
Make On-Boarding Count
Even though your new hires may be well schooled in complex, solution and value selling, they are not familiar with your organization, with their co-workers, with your products/services, and with your customers. Help ease their transition to their new job by practicing six sales on-boarding tips and identifying the six early warning signs that you need to take action.
Read about the 6 Onboarding Best Practices and Warning Signs
Take New Employee Orientation Health Check
About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned
One of the most important sales leadership decisions is who to hire and when.
How do you know when to grow, expand, hire, develop or fire? There are so many variables to consider...not least of which is determining what it will take to recoup any investment.
Typically sales managers wait to add a new salesperson until the current level of sales justifies the added expense. Some use a cost-to-sales ratio. Others just wait until they land a big deal to add more headcount. Unfortunately many of these strategies can backfire for different reasons. So how should you determine the best size and configuration of your sales force?
Thankfully, professionals who specialize in sales force effectiveness have come up with 4 proven guidelines to help with this challenging decision.
- Watch for indications that the size of your sales force is skewed, either up or down.
While it may seem obvious, you need to pay attention to early warning signs. Are your salespeople complaining that they don't have enough opportunities? Are they being ignored by their customers? Is too much time spent on non-revenue producing sales activities? And what about your competition...are they downsizing?
These are all clues that you may need to decrease the size of your own sales team.
Conversely, are your salespeople complaining about their travel or workload? Are competitors ramping up their sales teams? Do you hear from customers that they are dissatisfied with their level of service? Are your salespeople only re-actively taking orders with little time to prospect and fill the pipeline with target accounts?
These are signs that your sales team is understaffed.
Read the Remaining 3 Tips For Growing and Shrinking Your Sales Force
About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned
